


Inhumation

by applecup



Series: A Series Of Choices And Actions [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Voss - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 17:16:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11490978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecup/pseuds/applecup
Summary: Awenyth hoped to find fragment of peace, on Voss. What she got was something very different.





	Inhumation

Voss was something different altogether. 

Its sunlight felt like a warm blanket, comforting and familiar; its air smelled of autumn in Kaleth, all crisp leaves and the promise of soothing snows that were yet to come. This was a world untouched by the Empire, untouched by the war - held at bay by the visions of their Mystics, granted knowledge of their future by their gifts in the Force. That these people had fought off the Empire without even having achieved spaceflight was admirable indeed, and Awenyth was quite certain there was much the Republic could learn from them. (That the Jedi could, as well, though that was a thought she refused to let take any kind of root) 

_No better than the Sith_ , the Grand Master had said, though - her tone not so much judgemental as it was concerned, her fear of the Darkness that pervaded all associated with the Empire overriding all other concerns. 

_So am I better_ , Awenyth wondered, as she looked at herself in her fresher mirror, _Or am I worse?_

\- 

The sight of Sith and Imperials walking the streets of Voss-ka as free and unrestricted as her allies made an angry, bitter nausea roll around in Awenyth’s gut; she longed to light her sabers and paint the streets with their blood, and was stopped only by the knowledge that doing so would result in not just her expulsion from this place, but the Republic’s as a whole. 

It didn’t help she all but ran one over, in the marketplace - wasn’t looking where she was going, one foot angrily in front of another while her eyes glared at everything around her but the path ahead and her mind seethed, and collided with it before she knew what she was going on - red skin and bright orange eyes, as afraid and angry as Awenyth’s own aura, a fact which did not sit well on her in the slightest. 

‘Watch where you’re going, _Sith_ -’ 'You’re the one who needs to watch yourself, _Jedi_ -’ 'Is that a _threat_ -'  

’ _Stand_ down _, or be removed_.’ 

Awenyth didn’t need to turn and look to see they’d attracted Voss attention; itched to light her sabers, to put into practice every fantasy she’d nursed of stretching out a Sith demise as long as she was able. The Wrath was, to her eternal chagrin, too valuable to realise this desire with, but a substitute would more than suffice. 

( _You’ve every right to_ , that ill-placed instinct whispered. _Show the Voss strength, and they will respect you. Show them weakness, and they’ll run you through._ ) 

She was the first to turn away, though - stalking in the direction of anywhere-not-here, in search of anyone-not-Sith. 

('Eihn,’ one of the Sith’s attendants started, in the face of Awenyth’s retreat, a repulsive man in Imperial colours, 'Are you alright-?’)

\- 

_They are prophets_ , the Wrath had protested, _who lead their people. The Emperor is a madman who wishes to destroy all life. They are hardly comparable._

But wasn’t that how it started? Knowing better than others how to live their lives? (As though the Council didn’t know better than she, the things that she needed to keep her sanity intact) 

(the Wrath’s indignant grunts of pain never stopped being frustrating and satisfying, in equal manner; his refusal to submit, no matter how the collar whined, as admirable as it was enraging) 

\- 

The grass crunched satisfyingly beneath her feet, and Awenyth found herself just wanted to dig her feet into the dirt. Not her boots - her _feet_ , stripped naked and wriggled into alien soil. It was a ridiculous urge, but she indulged it all the same - while her crew (her friends, and their hangers-on) were eating, one evening, in Ken-La. Food - Voss food, at any rate - did not appeal, but standing underneath the starlight on Voss, her bare feet in free earth, Awenyth very almost felt at peace. 

(A ridiculous place for a sproutling transplanted from a urban jungle to find her centre, but there she was; looking up at a sky ruled by neither the Republic nor the Empire, and wondering if the worlds that fought for independence from them both weren’t, sometimes, right) 

\- 

The Wrath, of course, continued to be nothing but his dour, joyless, critical self. For a creature of passion, he was unrelentingly dispassionate, and Awenyth hated him just for that. (For his skin, for his accent, for the Darkness woven right through him - not as a corruption, but as something more natural than sunlight itself). 

'We do not have time, Jedi,’ he sneered, 'For you to be-’ 

(He paused, apparently lost for words at her ridiculous behaviour) 

'You’re a fine one to talk about _time_ , Sith. You’ve been sitting on your secrets for three centuries. If you’d tried-’ 

'Would your Republic have listened-?’ (he’d asked her this every time before, and she’d never had an answer) 

’-hadn’t betrayed-’ 

’-the _vision_ , Jedi-’ 

Visions, always slavish adherence to _visions_. This Sith was more Voss than he was anything else, and she hated him for it. 

\- 

'Master Jedi,’ her sergeant murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear, 'If he’s becoming a problem-’ 

'He’s a problem that we need,’ Awenyth hated to admit. 'For now.’ 

\- 

It was difficult not to look at Fulminiss’s fallen apprentices with horror. Not simply because they were Sith, as easy as it would have been for that to be the only reason. No; he’d not just turned on them, the Sith Order eating its own pups like feral, starving, animal, but he’d _ruined_ them - more than that, he’d ruined them using tasks he’d been the one to set them to. The worst fate a failed Padawan or Initiate had ever been subjected to was a one-way ticket back to their homeworld and a pat on the back; an insult, to be sure, but neither death nor madness. 

The Voss woman - her eyes that unsettling honeycomb-blue, her expression utterly unreadable, her aura calm - was little better, her only care for her absent charge and her only concern that Awenyth was not Voss. 

( _A heartlessness that would do Sith proud_ , as though Sith were the only ones without hearts) 

'Why do I get the feeling,’ Kira sighed, when they were alone, 'We’re going to regret this.’ 

( _The Shrine of Healing_ , he’d said, and Awenyth wondered just what that was a euphemism for) 

\- 

Trials. Pilgrimage. Great stone halls. A reluctance to acknowledge the worthiness of outsiders. Awenyth had seen this path before, even if the soil contained other things, here, than dust and blood. 

Still, there was a disturbance in this place. Voss was not a world without its blemishes - mottled bruising in the Force, the places in its sleepy equilibrium that war had left its marks, but this was more recent. A gash, and one recently inflicted - one that had stopped bleeding, yes, but which had hardly started healing. It would scar, too - an unnatural wound, a twisting of minds by whatever ritual Fulminiss had destroyed his own apprentices with. 

_We taught Fulminiss the healing ritual. He corrupted it, perverted it._

( _He unleashed its potential_ , the Sithness in her whispered, _as the Emperor unleashed yours_ -) 

(the Voss, it turned out, did not take it kindly when outsiders vomited on their stonework, even if they clutched their sides and sobbed all the while) 

\- 

Listening to Tala-Reh’s tale of her husband’s death just made Awenyth think, again, of the way Satele had described them. 

_Manipulated, led like blind nerfs._ There was none of the Empire’s air of violence here, but there didn’t need to be; the Voss breathed submission to their Mystics, obedience to strict interpretation woven into their very language. It made her want to scream; shattered the peaceful illusion that had been threatening to suck her in, exposing the darkness that beat in Voss veins for what it really was. 

They were not violent in the way that Sith were; were not sadistic in the way that Sith were, were not cruel in the way that Sith were. That just made it all the worse; that even here, in the midst of comforting peace, there could be such heartlessness. 

_You are an Outsider. You would not understand._

She’d heard that line before, as well. 

\- 

'Hey. You, uh. Got kinda angry back there. Everything alright?’ 

Voss’s dirt did not feel much different, underneath her bare feet, for all that Tala-Reh’s revelations had further soured her on its people. The times when she could be alone, like this - sat in the cool night air, behind the lodging-house they were sleeping in - were the only times on this vapidly seductive world she could even _begin_ to feel at peace. Kira interrupting it- well, she was welcome, truth be told. Awenyth knew that she could tie herself in knots at the best of times, and it had been an age since she’d had one of those. 

(It helped, perhaps, that she did not have the judgemental glaring of the Wrath; the clipped precision of her sergeant, the well-intentioned pestering of her droid) 

'These people,’ she replied, eventually, 'They- just let themselves be _used_. Tala’s husband willingly threw his life away to become a propaganda icon. It’s-’ 

She paused, her anger and frustration snarling up her coherent thoughts into a knot that refused to come undone. 

'Kinda messed up,’ Kira agreed - an understatement, and one for the ages. 'I know the Grandmaster said they were more like Sith, but… even Sith don’t blindly follow visions like that. Especially not other people’s.’

'Other than him,’ Awenyth replied, frowning to herself. Was this the root of her problem, or did it go deeper? 

'Yeah, well,’ Kira mused, 'He’s a whole 'nother problem.’ She paused, before adding, 'Don’t let him get to you. He’s-’ 

’-A Sith,’ Awenyth sighed - smiling a little to herself, all the same. 

'Exactly.’ Kira grinned, and for a moment, Awenyth could almost believe that she could, too.


End file.
